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Here's a statement of the obvious: The opinions expressed here are those of the participants, not those of the Mutual Fund Observer. We cannot vouch for the accuracy or appropriateness of any of it, though we do encourage civility and good humor.
  • 2021 capital gains distribution estimates (mutual funds and ETFs)
    @Simon,
    I own a Shelton Capital fund, but have never seen the distribution amounts posted. SBH amounts are still not posted yet. Grandeur Peak, Vanguard, Rondure, Matthews Asia and FMI Funds are several funds that have still not posted yet as of this morning.
    I believe this is the link where the information will be posted once it is determined for SBH:
    https://sbhfunds.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Distribution-Information-2021_10.pdf
  • T. Rowe Price Summit Program
    Here's the benefits sheet on the old Select Client Services.
    https://individual.troweprice.com/staticFiles/Retail/Shared/PDFs/FullBenefits.pdf
    Something else missing on the new Summit Program benefits sheet is Turbotax. The online version was free at the $250K level, and downloaded products were free at the $1M level.
    I'd say that they were more targeting the mass affluent than the high net worth investors. Really, is that free subscription to Kiplinger's Personal Finance at the $1M level going to get you to double your $500K investment with them?
  • T. Rowe Price Summit Program
    $250k seems to be lot of dough for the privilege of getting TRP’s closed funds.
    As you know, Vanguard investors need $1M (Flagship status) to access certain closed Vanguard funds.
  • SS increase: what to do
    Many European countries do not use single payer systems.
    Everyone in France must buy health insurance, sold by a number of nonprofit funds [i.e. multiple payers]. ...
    Switzerland has a universal health care system, requiring all to buy insurance. The plans resemble those in the United States under the Affordable Care Act: offered by private insurance companies, community rated and guaranteed-issue, with prices varying by things like breadth of network, size of deductible and ease of seeing a specialist.
    https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2017/09/18/upshot/best-health-care-system-country-bracket.html
    See also: International Health Systems for Single Payer Advocates
    https://www.pnhp.org/single_payer_resources/international_health_systems_for_single_payer_advocates.php
    Even with a single payer system (e.g. original Medicare), providers would still need to code claims to receive payment for services rendered:
    What are ICD Diagnosis Codes Used For?
    Help Medicare claims paying offices process Medicare claims
    https://www.cms.gov/Medicare/Coordination-of-Benefits-and-Recovery/Mandatory-Insurer-Reporting-For-Non-Group-Health-Plans/NGHP-Training-Material/Downloads/ICD-Diagnosis-Code-Requirements-Part-I.pdf (see slide 5)
    Codings are used not just for billing purposes but to keep accurate records and communicate clearly. From the UK's National Health Service, describing a coder's job:
    You begin by recording the stay of an elderly woman who had a hip operation two days ago. From her medical notes, you find out the ward she stayed on before surgery, how long her operation took, her recovery time and any other treatment she received. Then you use the special alphanumeric code you've been trained in and record everything on the computer system.
    These records can be understood throughout the NHS and used to plan for future patient care.
    https://www.stepintothenhs.nhs.uk/careers/clinical-coder
  • Wealthtrack - Weekly Investment Show
    Very insightful for sure. I went back to view her YouTube interviews in the last 10 years and they are consistently informative. Toward the end she picked Cathy Woods’s ETF, AKKK as an example of innovation that drive this economy.
  • Understanding Tail Risk
    Yes, I understand what you're expressing/your point. Charts lend a nice view, for me.
    When bonds had more correlation to equity moves, this chart provides an interesting view. If one was really astute about market moves, a sell/buy rotation between EDV (Vanguard long bond) and SPY would have paid a handsome return over the years. From the chart begin (limited by EDV inception) one's money would have returned the same value through March, 2017, for EDV and SPY. Most folks would never guess this, if the question were on an exam.
    And yes, one may still make money with hard play in bonds............as in a play between TBT (rising rates) and TMF (falling rates); or others.
    You may plug in any of the tickers you listed, as the chart link is an active/to use chart.
    CHART
  • Climate change funds
    I was looking at some of my old notes today. I see I forgot a couple of the ETF's I was looking into. Descriptions are from etf.com.
    RNRG
    RNRG offers exposure to companies that produce energy from renewable sources including wind, solar, hydroelectric, geothermal, and biofuels including YieldCos — a holding company for renewable energy projects that have been spun off by a larger energy utility. The portfolio is market-cap-weighted, with a cap of 6% on individual names. While YieldCos are sometimes marketed as MLPs for renewables, note that these firms use a traditional C-corp structure with no inherent tax benefits. Dividends from the fund are taxable. The Fund name and investment strategies changed effective November 19, 2018. The fund originally tracked the Indxx Global YieldCo Index through November 16, 2018 and the Indxx YieldCo & Renewable Energy Income Index thereafter. On Feb. 1, 2021, the fund name, ticker (YLCO) and index changed, dropping its focus on YieldCos while still including them in the fund.
    You can read more about yieldco's here:
    https://cleanenergysolutions.org/instruments/yieldcos
    SIMS is similar to GRID, but gets into more than just smart electrical transmission:
    SIMS is passively-managed to provide exposure to firms which the index provider defines as companies involved in: smart building infrastructure, smart power grids, intelligent transportation infrastructure, or intelligent water infrastructure. Each company is further classified as either “core” or “non-core,” depending on the level of involvement in innovative infrastructure. The index is initially equally weighted, but then tilts the overall portfolio weight towards core firms by 20%. As a result, pure plays are overweighted. Prior to June 25, 2019 the fund traded under the ticker XKII.
  • SS increase: what to do
    Thanks for the insight from the provider's perspective. As a patient (or in business terms, as a customer), I've wound up delving into not just CPT codes but their modifiers. In one doctor's office after I started questioning some things, they sent their claims coder out to talk with me and we had a friendly ten minute discussion. Among other things, we talked about how absurd the whole system is.
    I've gone to providers and pointed out that the insurer didn't process the claim correctly and that the provider (not me) should be getting more money. More often than not the response was that it wasn't worth their time and effort to refile and that there's a certain amount of slack built into the system.
    It goes the other way as well. I was infuriated when, a year after an insurer had properly denied a doctor's claim for a procedure already included in a global surgical package, the insurer spontaneously paid the claim.
    Regarding tests prescribed by out-of-network physicians being covered: my experience is that they are. As I noted above, under ACA I went to a doctor who wasn't covered. The blood work that he prescribed was always covered, so long as it was sent to an in-network lab. (Let's not get into how the drawing of blood is paid for; it depends on who draws the blood!)
  • Understanding Tail Risk
    This CHART is TAIL vs SPY for one year (253 business days). You may drag (left) at the 253 day area and travel backwards for a moving one year period, OR you may right click the 253 day and select ALL (or other choices) to view the total pattern back to the 2017 inception date for TAIL. You may ALSO right click in the chart and select ANIMATE. ANIMATE is not encouraged if one has consumed excess alcoholic beverage or has other certain medical circumstances. :)
    Remain curious,
    Catch
  • Social Security Claiming Strategies - Claim Early & Invest
    One can use Portfolio Visualizer (PV) to see how he arrived at the age 70 investment portfolio values. PV shows slightly lower values. That is possibly because when one asks PV for a 6% rate of return, it doesn't use 6%/12 (0.5 basis points) for the monthly return, but 0.487 basis points (compounds to 6% annually). Just a guess.
    Here's the PV setup for 6%. Mouse over the graph for the 8 year (age 62-age 70) result.
    On the withdrawal side (after age 70), the video makes two simplifying assumptions:
    • You will die at age 90. 5% withdrawal x 20 years = 100%. That leaves longevity risk.
    • The real rate of return of the portfolio is zero. This addresses @bee's point that the portfolio grows over time. The video's portfolio does grow in nominal returns at precisely the rate of inflation.
    bee does a nice job with PV in showing how one might have invested in the past. Kudos for incorporating a couple of bear stock markets in the mix. That said, there are two implicit, and IMHO fairly aggressive, assumptions made:
    • The funds selected (or any fund of one's choosing) will continue to outperform the market. I've added a 60/40 S&P 500/bond market mix (rebalanced annually). This didn't survive 15 years. PV link.
    • The markets going forward will produce real returns similar to those of the past 20 years. Schwab is projecting average real returns over the next decade of around 4.5% in the stock market and negative bond returns. And that's before considering higher inflation - the projection was from last May, before inflation took off.
    image
    Source page: https://www.schwab.com/resource-center/insights/content/why-market-returns-may-be-lower-in-the-future
    With respect to sheltering the portfolio from taxes via a Roth IRA: this assumes that the part time worker is not already putting that money into an IRA (and maxing out), else contributing more to an IRA might not be an option. In any case, one could not contribute even half the age 62 benefits to SS. $1400 x 12 mo = $16,800. Including the $1K catch up amount, the max that one can contribute to an IRA is $7K.
    Looking at the Roth conversion option: let's assume one is in the 12% tax bracket, no state taxes. If one converted $140K and somehow managed to remain in the 12% bracket, then that would use up the $16.8K in SS, thus effectively adding that amount to the Roth IRA. In reality, that would move one into the 22% or 24% bracket; hardly a good strategy. Not to mention that this would make more of the SS benefits taxable. Further, in order to execute this plan for eight years, one would need to have $1.12M in a traditional IRA available for conversion.
    This has a better chance of being feasible if one is in a higher tax bracket (that would reduce the amount of the conversion necessary to incur $16.8K in taxes). However, given the correlation between income and longevity, the higher income person is also more subject to longevity risk and thus would likely benefit more from the lifetime income guaranteed by SS.
    image
    Regarding the annuity option: we don't know where the cost figure comes from, or what type of annuity it is. Though I agree with what I think is @JonGaltIII's assumption - life only, no inflation adjustments. One can buy joint and survivor annuities, but they cost more. I don't believe there are any inflation adjusted fixed immediate annuities left on the market, but there should still be some that provide for annual increases of a fixed amount (say, 2%). Of course those also cost more.
    If there is the possibility of a surviving spouse, that just makes SS look even better. With SS, if the spouse with the larger benefits dies first, the surviving spouse gets those benefits instead of one's own. Unless one expects both spouses to live past the break even point (~82 give or take), the optimal strategy is often for the lower benefit spouse to take SS early (62) and the higher benefit spouse to defer to age 70.
  • SS increase: what to do
    @Old_Joe
    I retired in 2019 after 40 years in primary care medical practice, both self employed and as an employee.
    When I was self employed, my livelihood and the salaries of all of our employees depended on the knowledge and expertise of the billing staff, who worked long hours to get us every dollar they could out of the insurance companies. Despite many hours talking to them, I still do not understand medical billing. We paid these folks good salaries to sit on the phone for hours and wrangle with other staff at Blue Cross for example, over $15 or $20. But we figured if they spent 30 minutes collecting $50 we were ahead of the game.
    A lot of physicians don't bother, or hire a billing service, who just tries once. In primary care, however, the margins are so thin ( our overhead never dropped below 55%) every dollar counted.
    I think we would have been better off charging $50 a visit, cash. We would have needed far fewer staff, but it was unclear ( and I could never get an answer) if we didn't take insurance, if our patients would have had any of their tests or prescriptions covered. That is where the real costs in health care are, not doctor's salaries, especially primary care.
    Once I joined a hospital owned practice, it was their problem, but I can tell you collections and efficiency fell off the cliff.
    It is in the financial interest of the insurance companies to make this as complicated as possible, as they live off of the 25% America spends on administrative expenses. Highest in the world!
  • Understanding Tail Risk
    I have had a small position since 2019. It has done what I expected, ie buffered market declines.
    March 2020 Tail was up 27% to SPY drop of 31%. It is down about 15% since I bought it, far less than inverse ETFs like SH which lost over 50%
    It also pays about .7 to 1%
    the usual advice is to rebalance to maintain the same % in your portfolio. That would work pretty well I think
  • Social Security Claiming Strategies - Claim Early & Invest
    The most thorough analysis that I have come across with regard to "claim & invest" strategies appears on the SSA's website. It is exceptionally granular -- and helpful -- when it comes to the issue of discount rate specification.
    https://www.ssa.gov/policy/docs/ssb/v76n2/v76n2p1.html
  • Preparing For The Grizzly Bear
    I think we all need to be aware of the potential catastrophe if we enter a prolonged bear market. People who are depending on their equity returns to live on will be hurt very very badly.
    While the 1930s are probably not a useful comparison, as the Fed was nowhere to be seen, many of us lived through the 2000 to 2013 crash. While there was a "recovery" to a previous high by 5/29/2007, within five months things went south again, and did not recover until 2013.
    Taking the two periods together, it was over 13 years of no returns. The PE fell from 35 to 8.
    While the Fed is obviously more willing to intervene now, with rates at near zero, and the deficit enormous, there may be less they can do.
  • Preparing For The Grizzly Bear
    “Everybody Ought to be Rich” - by John J. Raskov
    Article - Ladies Home Journal (1929)
    “Mere saving is closely akin to the socialist policy of dividing and likewise runs up against the same objection that there is not enough around to save. The savings that count cannot be static. They must be going into the production of wealth. They may go in as debt and the managers of the wealth-making enterprises take all the profit over and above the interest paid. That has been the course recommended for saving and for the reasons that have been set out-the fallacy of conservative investment which is not conservative at all. The way to wealth is to get into the profit end of wealth production in this country.”
    And this - “How Can We Tell if the Market is Overvalued?”
    Article by Brad McMillan (2021)
    “So, is the market crazy expensive? (For the record, this is how my son would put this question.) As I mentioned above, we have three ways to get to the answer. Based on history, the answer is yes. Based on current interest rates, the market looks reasonably priced—not cheap, but certainly within a reasonable range. Finally, based on market behavior, we can see rational pricing. As I see it, history does not seem to be the best guide to our answer, especially given the multidecade trend of rising valuations. On balance, the right answer seems to be that the market is reasonably priced.”
  • World Stock Funds-Are they a viable alternative?
    @Observant1. Just checked out the PV you posted. Thank you. Yes very helpful. Will have to use it myself
  • Understanding Tail Risk
    Re TAIL (etf)
    I’ve come upon a better description of the strategy. In particular, the fund (TAIL) relies on intermediate, rather than long term treasuries (as I earlier stated) for ballast, while purchasing put options. The manager explains that under normal conditions, the fund is expected to lose money.
    Excerpt: “The Cambria Tail Risk ETF seeks to mitigate significant downside market risk. The Fund intends to invest in a portfolio of "out of the money" put options purchased on the U.S. stock market. TAIL strategy offers the potential advantage of buying more puts when volatility is low and fewer puts when volatility is high. While a portion of the fund's assets will be invested in the basket of long put option premiums, the majority of fund assets will be invested in intermediate term US Treasuries. As the fund is designed to be a hedge against market declines and rising volatility, Cambria expects the fund to produce negative returns in the most years with rising markets or declining volatility.”
    Source https://www.cambriafunds.com/tail
    Here’s a related bit of information cited in “Up & Down Wall Street” (Barron’s, Nov. 15). Eric Metz, an options trader is credited by Randall Forsyth as providing the following advice:
    “Metz (recommends) taking advantage of a current anomaly in the options market. Premiums on calls on the Nasdaq are higher than those on put options—the reverse of the usual skew. Typically, hedgers pay higher premiums on puts to ensure against the downside of their holdings. But bullish enthusiasm currently is making for higher premiums on upside calls.”
  • SS increase: what to do
    Out of curiosity, I fed lisinopril into GoodRx, and the cheapest price it gave me for a 90 day supply was at a supermarket without a coupon. If you use a GoodRx coupon at the same place it would cost over 10% more.
  • SS increase: what to do
    @BenWP - Yes, sounds like you & I have same plan. I’ve found in the past that some seldom prescribed meds that cost $50 - $100 with that insurance plan can be had for approximately $10 - $15 if I use Good RX instead (at Meijers). So, I’m not totally blind-sided by your post. But - Geez - liscinopril’s an old and very commonly prescribed med for controlling blood pressure. I’m surprised that price gouging is occurring on this very common med. Cudos to you for noting the discrepancies in pricing.